“We slaughtered them!” Bonnlyn cheered as she took a swig of her flask.

The dwarf looked a sweaty half-dressed mess as she reclined into her seat, the top half of her gambeson unbuttoned to reveal her rather ample cleavage to the world.

Not that she was alone in that. Just about all the girls had shed their tops prior to sprawling about the team’s communal lounge. The only exception was Marline, who had simply deigned to undo one of the buttons of her armor in an attempt to cool down.

Which only had William more convinced than ever that the woman was actually some kind of void creature pretending to be an elf.

He’d definitely shucked off his gambeson prior to running a wet cloth over his sweaty neck.

And it said a lot about just how wiped the entire team was that the most he’d received in response to said action was a single wolf whistle – from Bonnlyn naturally – and a few furtive glances.

By contrast, he’d admit to… glancing himself.

Just because he considered himself far too old to have a relationship of any kind with anyone ‘his age’ didn’t mean he wasn’t human.

Young, sweaty, nubile bodies, he thought, deliberately tearing his gaze away as he scooped up the fallen gambesons and stacked them on the nearby couch.

Which was just about the only piece of furniture unoccupied. Olzena and Bonnlyn had grabbed the table, Marline was leaning against the back wall, and a thoroughly drained Verity had chosen the floor as her resting place.

“Man, I wish I could have seen that half-elf girl’s face when you got her with that volley-bow,” Bonnlyn mused as much to herself as the partially comatose orc.

The girl in question made a sound that might have been agreement or protest, but it was utterly unintelligible as Marline casually leaned over to borrow the dwarf’s flask.

“Hey!” Bonnlyn complained as the dark elf fiddled with the cap.

“Mine’s empty, I can’t be bothered going to the sink, and I shared mine with you on last night’s run,” Marline responded casually.

To which the dwarf couldn’t really say anything. As a matter of necessity given the rather frantic living conditions of their close confines, any concept of personal belongings had been somewhat eroded.

Though heaven help anyone who dared to touch Olzenya’s small collection of rather expensive shampoos.

…Or Verity’s teddy bear.

“Fine,” the dwarf sat back.

Smiling, her teammate took a swig, only to immediately choke.

“What-” The dark elf spluttered between coughs as she slammed the flask back down on the table. “Is- is this ale!?”

The redhead smiled slyly. “It’s only contraband if you get caught.”

“We’ve got another fight in six hours!”

Against a second year team – the leader of which he thankfully didn’t owe a date this time. An opportunity to practice, even against first years, was not one the human girl he’d spoken to had been willing to pass up.

He definitely didn’t expect to win that fight. It likely wouldn’t even be close. But it would give him some idea of what they’d be up against when he finally faced off against Tala’s team.

Across from him, the bickering duo continued as Bonnlyn rolled her eyes. “It’ll be out of our systems by then. It’s just a small drink.”

The girl reached over to where Marline had placed the flask, only to pause when she saw that it was conspicuously absent.

No, not absent, William thought as they all watched Olzenya of all people take a swig.

Time seemed to pause as three sets of eyes regarded the prim and proper high elf.

“Not bad,” the girl in question finally admitted as she languidly slid the flask back across the table to the dwarf, who numbly scooped it up.

“Yeah…”

Christ, she really is happy we won, William thought. I’ve never seen her this mellow.

Marline just muttered something before she returned to leaning against the wall. He in turn was just about to ask for a sip of this mystery ale himself, before he felt a quiet tug at his pants.

Looking down, he saw that Verity had extricated herself from the floor. “Are you alright?”

Even as she said the words, she glanced to the side, though whether that was down to innate shyness or the fact that he wasn’t currently wearing a shirt was up in the air. More to the point, the question actually surprised him.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked, not unkindly.

“Because you’ve been brooding up a storm over there ever since we got back.” Bonnlyn opined from her seat. “Even our resident high elf has loosened up a bit with our most recent victory, but you’ve had a face like someone just killed your cat.”

He did?

“As much as I hate to agree with the dwarf,” Olzenya said. “She has a point. This should be a moment of celebration. Our first fight as a team and it was a victory with but a single loss on our side.”

The woman had a slight smile on her face at the last sentence, as she sent a sidelong smirk in Bonnlyn’s direction, who in turn flipped her off – a motion that had much the same meaning in this reality as the last, and for much the same reason.

William just shook his head. “I’ve just been… thinking.”

“Was your bolt-bow faulty?” Marline asked, surprising him. Though at his glance, she got a little defensive. “I’m not a mind reader, I just noticed that you were positively glaring at yours when we returned our weapons.”

Well, she wasn’t wrong. If not for the reasons she expected.

That first salvo, William thought. It should have been enough to bring down my target.

She hadn’t been trying to dodge and she’d been traveling in a straight line. It should have been an easy first blood.

It wasn’t though.

Of the three shot burst he’d fired, two shot had hit armour. The third had hit the girl in the forearm – which, while debilitating, hadn’t been ‘fatal’. Rather than dropping to the sand covered floor below, he’d instead been forced to engage her in a running battle below decks.

All because his weapon had lacked the killing power needed to end the fight decisively.

It was… frustrating – even if the ensuing fight had allowed him to test out one of his more unique spells.

“Ha!” Bonnlyn laughed. “He’s not the only one then. Now, that Instructor said those bolts had the same weight and flight speed as the regulars, but I say things were just a little off. Otherwise I’d have nailed that girl that got me a dozen times over.”

Privately, William doubted that. He’d seen her on the firing range. And given the looks both Olzenya and Marline were giving her, he knew he wasn’t the only one.

Cutting any comments either might have made off at the pass, he coughed. “I… don’t think it was that. The bolts felt the same to me.”

Which was the problem.

He shook his head. “I guess I was just annoyed that I missed that opening salvo.”

The entire room made commiserating hums at that. While they’d won quite convincingly – something that was mostly owed to Marline, who’d downed three people and a good dozen opposing crew members – he was sure there were a ton of things each of them was thinking they’d do differently in future.

Such was the purpose of training after all.

“What was that spell you used?” Marline asked after a moment.

A little caught off guard by the somewhat abrupt change in topic, he floundered for a moment. “How’d you hear about that?”

Rather than Marline, it was Olzenya who answered. “The girl you took down was talking about it. She was complaining to the instructor. Well, more like screaming bloody murder.”

William was pretty sure that was an exaggeration. One simply didn’t talk to the Instructors that way.

“I assume that was what she called you over to talk about just as we were leaving?” The high elf continued, eyes glinting with genuine curiosity.

Which wasn’t unexpected. While Marline could best be described as the team’s best all-rounder, and Verity their physical powerhouse, Olzenya definitely had the most magical talent behind William himself.

Which was why it was rather unfortunate that she was so handicapped by the rules of the Floats. So it made sense that she’d be interested in an offensive application of magic that wouldn’t result in her being summarily booted from the arena.

Which is why it’s a shame she’s likely to be disappointed in what the spell actually is, he thought as he raised a single finger.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Flashbang.”

As far as activation phrases went it was as simple as could be.

Because it was supposed to be fast and surprising.

And surprising it was, as William listened with closed eyes as a deluge of surprised grunts and shrieks hit his ears as the room was filled with a thunderous crack and a brief flash of blinding light.

When he opened them again, he wasn’t surprised to see his team alternately rubbing their eyes and glaring at him.

“What the fuck!” Bonnlyn whined from the floor – given the chair she’d been rocking back in had fallen backwards. “Did you have to do that!?”

He smiled. “I thought it wise to give you a physical demonstration.”

Olzenya looked as annoyed as anyone else – which was fair given that her jungle dwelling heritage meant she was particularly vulnerable to bright lights – but she also had a slightly analytical cant to her features as she blearily gazed at his still raised finger.

“A lightning spell?” She said after a moment. “One designed not to strike someone, but to disorientate through light and noise.”

He nodded, pleased with how quickly she picked it up. “Yeah. Not as useful in the open air, but damn handy down in the lower decks where it’s darker.”

Plus, the close confines helped concentrate the sound. Admittedly, that was a bit of a double edged sword given that the user was also going to be suffering the effects, but the fact that they’d be prepared for it and the spell having a slightly directional nature helped.

Hence why he’d aimed his finger at the ceiling.

“Useful,” Marline said. “Though I’d point out that-”

“It’ll be less useful on dark elves or half-elves with dark elven heritage,” William interrupted. “I’m aware. With that said, it’d still be disorientating. It’d just be a second or two, but that’s an eternity in a fight.”

The dark elf couldn’t argue that given she hadn’t exactly been unaffected. Not least of all because while the flash aspect wouldn’t be as effective against dark elves, the noise was still plenty effective against elves in general given their heightened hearing.

“Forget that!” Bonnlyn grunted as she grumpily righted her chair. “Couldn’t you just have explained it rather than-”

Whatever else she might have said was interrupted as the door to their room was slammed open and two guards charged in, blades not exactly drawn, but with their hands clearly on the hilts.

Though they paused as they looked around.

After a moment of scanning the surprised cadets, the one on the right spoke. “Apologies, cadets. We heard a noise and rushed to investigate.”

Ah, he hadn’t thought about that. A bit of a misstep on his part. While the rooms didn’t have guards posted on the doors, the entrance to the dorms did. And the academy constantly had patrols moving through it.

Which made sense. A large chunk of the future leadership of the continent was located in the academy.

Volatile leadership at that. Some coming from families with blood feuds going back generations.

It went unsaid that the majority of the guards patrolling the halls were there as much to protect the cadets from each other as any outside force.

“I dropped my chair,” Bonnyln said before anyone could interrupt. “That was probably what you heard.”

The rest of the team wisely kept quiet. Because, while casting spells in the dormitory wasn’t strictly against the rules, it was exactly encouraged either.

“Loud chair,” the guard said after a moment, clearly not believing a word of it.

Bonnlyn just shrugged, giving away nothing.

The stand-off between the two continued for a few seconds longer, before the guardswoman sighed.

“Well, do try to be more careful in future, cadet.” The woman said, finally taking her hand off her blade as her colleague did the same. “We’ll leave you be now.”

“My thanks for your quick response,” Bonnlyn said. “Even if it was unneeded on this occasion.”

The guard said nothing, as she and her partner left, closing the door behind them.

After a few moments, the room let out a collective sigh of relief. Sure, as marine-knight cadets they technically outranked the guards – but staff were staff and cadets were cadets.

“Sorry,” William muttered, cursing himself for a hotheaded moron who was definitely old enough to know better. “Thanks for covering for me, Bonnlyn.”

He’d have liked to say it was a byproduct of a young man’s hormones, but the reality was that he’d always been a little too quick and a little too eager to show off a new ‘invention’.

The dwarf just smiled. “What are teammates for? You know, besides blinding and deafening you.”

He took the small barb in the spirit it was intended, giving her an apologetic shrug.

“It’s a surprisingly simple spell though,” Olzenya murmured consideringly. “If I could get a nap in between now and our next match, I think I could add it to my repertoire. With some luck, it might take our opponents this afternoon off guard.”

It said a lot about the high elf’s talent that William didn’t doubt that she’d have it ready by then. Ignoring the idea of forming an entirely new contract from a single conversation, the notion that she could slip into REM sleep during a short nap was just another example of her talent as a mage.

He could do the same, of course, but he’d been a grown man in a baby’s body for the first few years of his existence on this world. Figuring out how his magic worked had been one of the few elements that had kept him sane during that time.

“You’re more than welcome to try,” he said. “It’s mostly just a depowered lightning spell with a focus on light and sound. I’ve got mine sub-divided.”

Olzenya nodded, no doubt going through a series of memetic exercises in her mind as she stood up. “Well, with that in mind, I’ll be heading to bed. I’d suggest the rest of you do the same.”

Around the table, the others nodded with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The ability to fall asleep at the flick of a switch was a valuable skillset for a mage, but it came easier to some than others.

As he watched Bonnlyn scoop up her flask and grudgingly head for her room, he could only hope they managed to lock in his little innovation.

This afternoon, they really would need all the help they could get.

--------------------------------------

Instructor Griffith hummed quietly to herself as she looked over the day’s reports. It was a simple tune from her childhood. Little more than a nursery rhyme really. Small and silly, the sort of thing her cadets would never associate with their big mean instructor.

Fortunately for her mystique as an educator, she was alone in her office and the door was locked.

Though it didn’t really need to be given just how few souls were roaming the halls this late in the evening.

The Academy was never empty, but it was more often than not quite bereft of both cadets and instructors on the weekend. Even the serving staff ran on little more than a skeleton crew. The only places that remained a hotbed of activity were the Floats, Airfields and Skeleton.

Those assets were too useful and valuable to ever really be left fallow.

As at least two groups of more canny first years had clearly discovered.

Which was a decent part of why she was still present at the academy on a day when she’d really rather be down at the tavern hoping to attract the eye of some young stallion.

That thought stilled the sound of her humming for just a moment, a hint of frustration entering her posture as she realized just how long it’d been since she’d had any kind of contact on that front.

Pent up didn’t even begin to describe it. It’d been nearly a year since she’d transferred from her unit in the Sunlands down to the Academy and in that time she could count on one hand the number of evenings she’d had to herself.

Ok, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, she thought glumly as she leafed through the sheaf of papers in her hand. But not much of one.

As one of the younger members of the teaching staff – at twenty six – it was pretty much inevitable that she’d be saddled with much of the scut work.

Like going through the arena master’s reports on two first year team’s arena debuts, she thought as she slowly read through the other woman’s slightly verbose wording on the topic. Something that could have waited until monday if the headmaster wasn’t such a raging cunt.

The team from House Southshore was about what she’d expected, with their leader’s organizational opportunism in arranging a weekend bout failing to translate onto the battlefield.

It’s early days yet, though, Griffith thought idly. First time nerves are to be expected.

Debut fights were usually a shitshow as cadets came to terms with the idea of actual team-based combat. Oh, certainly the noble ones would have some experience derived from time spent with their house, but that paled in comparison to what it felt like to fight on the Floats.

Griffith certainly remembered just how overwhelmed she felt when she first stepped into that massive hangar.

The giant arenas cost a fortune to build – and required another smaller fortune to operate, staff, supply and maintain.

And that was ignoring the mithril engine installed into the base of the arena which allowed the cannons to operate. A mithril engine that could have given the Royal Fleet another ship of the line if it were repurposed.

Yet it was worth it.

Not just for cadets, but for airship crews as well. There was a reason the Lindholm Royal Navy was the most feared in existence - and that was a result of their holistic approach to airship operations.

Mages alone did not win wars. Only through the power of the entire crew working together could an airship truly reach its potential in the heat of combat.

And the Floats were about as close to real combat as modern technology could create short of sending up two airships and hoping no one dropped out of the sky after getting a dose of harpy venom.

Though at least if we did that, we’d be able to more adequately include shards in the exercise, Griffith thought.

That was certainly at least one shortcoming of the Floats. And one the administration seemed determined to ignore, the dinosaurs there unwilling to admit the growing dominance of shards over conventional cannon and boarding tactics.

She shook her head, unwilling to allow herself to diverge from the topic at hand in favour of rehashing old and worn arguments.

Continuing to read through the report, she couldn’t help but smile a bit at the description of ‘her’ team’s outright trashing of their opposition.

Team Seven had outmanoeuvred, outperformed and out-teched their opposition.

And while Griffith didn’t fully buy into the notion of house rivalries, she’d admit to feeling a certain sense of quiet satisfaction that her house full of ‘plebs’ had managed to draw first blood.

Never mind the fact that Team Seven was three fifths nobility by weight – and at least one of those plebs was practically mercantile nobility.

The only thing the Mecant Magnate currently lacked was the title to give with their wealth – something young Bonnlyn was set to rectify.

And while she’d expected them to do well given the presence of cadets Verity and Greygrass, the outright dominating performance was surprising.

An outcome the arena master suspected was at least partially attributed to their leadership – even if she had some rather unflattering things to say about the use of unsanctioned magic in her arena.

…While still noting the utility of this new spell.

William Ashfield, Griffith murmured as her finger traced over the name. What an enigma you’re turning out to be.

She’d expected many things from the young man given his mother’s descriptors of him. Most revolving around scandals in which he’d been found in young women’s beds.

Yet that hadn’t happened.

Rather, from all reports he hadn’t even shown a hint of interest in his team – or any other cadet for that matter. From her own observations and that of the servants, he seemed to have taken on an almost older brother role.

Which, while not outside the realm of possibility given that he had a younger sibling, was still unexpected. As was his usurpation of the leadership role of his team, a position she’d expected to go to either of the two elves that made up the group.

It was no coincidence after all that despite being the ‘common house’, each team in House Royal had at least one noble born scion – sometimes more, as was the case with Team Seven.

Attentive in his lessons, organized, disciplined, clearly driven by something, Griffith thought.

It was almost enough to make her think Janet Ashfield’s claims about her son were biased in some way, if not fabricated entirely.

But she didn’t…

Because she’d noticed the way he watched her.

Not his fellow cadets.

Her.

Griffith had thought that to mean that she’d need to keep an eye on her third or fourth year cadets. Not her fellow instructors.

Or herself.

It was flattering in a way – she’d been made aware that her strict bearing generally intimidated men. To have a young man be clearly so attracted to her in spite, or perhaps because of, it was… well, she wasn’t made of stone.

As evidenced by the fact that she was tempted. He was a handsome young man and she was… frustrated.

It made her want to slam her head against the wall in both horror and shame.

Even as a voice in her head seemed to whisper, ‘though you’d hardly be the first instructor to-‘

She cut that line of thought down.

Hard.

Instead she focused on the most prominent part of the report.

This new ‘flashbang’ spell.

Easily learned. Easily applied. Low aether cost. Downright debilitating when used under the correct circumstances. Non-lethal.

And while it hadn’t allowed the team to triumph in their second bout against a second year team – not even close - the applications of this spell were both obvious and myriad.

Which meant it was of interest to the crown – and the academy was not too proud to take inspiration from something clearly designed by a first year cadet.

It had done it before and it would do it again.

With that said, they couldn’t just take it. There were procedures to be followed. The crown couldn’t just be seen to ‘steal’ a family’s magecraft.

No, compensation would be required if the spell was found to be something the crown truly wanted. Such was the lifeblood of the feudal system. Leal service required reward.

Putting any thought of handsome young cadets from her mind, Griffith started to pen a letter.